Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous

This DVD is based on the Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous book, collecting Astonishing X-Men #7–12 by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday. In that story, the Danger Room becomes sentient and tries to take revenges on its “oppressors” by sending a Sentinel after them. It feels to this viewer as though I’ve come into the middle of a story, with various characters referring to prior events and dealing with the aftermath of the previous story, so you may want to rewatch Gifted before viewing this.

The limited animation, presented in six 9-to-11-minute chapters (the credits run an additional minute and a half), is as effective as ever — by which I mean the actual movement is kept to small sections of the screen (as when only the lips move) or particular visual tricks (such as blurring), but it’s selected purposefully to enhance what would otherwise be a filmstrip soundtrack. Unfortunately, the voice work isn’t particularly good. Colossus has the exaggerated Russian accent, for example, but the voices don’t evoke any emotion in the listener.

Unlike the other motion comics, this disc has no special features, just the ability to play the episodes all together or individually. Also, the Fantastic Four guest-star; Ben Grimm’s animation is particularly off-putting. You can see the two teams together briefly in this clip: